Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain's opposition Labour
party, has been sitting on the fence over Brexit for the last
two years.
But Jeremy Corbyn is coming under increasing pressure
from some of his young radical supporters
to change policy and back a second referendum
or at least hold a public vote on whatever deal Theresa
May comes back from Brussels with at the end of the year.
Until now, Mr Corbyn has enjoyed the full backing
from his own support group of more
than 40,000 grassroots members called Momentum.
Now, one member of that group thinks
that things should change.
Over the past two years, things have been a bit quiet in terms
of Brexit, especially from the left of the Labour party.
Alena Ivanonva has launched a petition
which, if it goes to 4,000 signatures,
or 10% of Momentum membership, will
force a referendum of the group's entire membership
on whether to have a second vote on Brexit.
Already, it has attracted close to 3,700 names.
I campaigned very hard for Remain
because I believe in the potential for, especially,
a Labour-led government within the EU
to radically reform what the EU is about.
And so I thought I need to do something
because time is running out.
We're getting closer to conference this year.
And we're not really talking about this enough.
This may not be music to the ears of Mr Corbyn,
who's tried to walk a tightrope between the mostly pro-EU
Labour membership and a large number of Labour voters who
backed Leave.
We could focus on trying to really run
the arguments of the referendum, oppose Brexit at every turn,
and be a party that represents the 48% who voted Remain
in the referendum, and only 48%, or we
can rise to the democratic challenge set
before us to represent the whole country
and bring people together by putting forward
a progressive vision for a post-Brexit Britain.
Critics of Mr Corbyn point out, accurately, that, for decades,
he has been a Eurosceptic.
But Matt Zarb-Cousin, his former spokesman,
says that the Corbyn proposals for staying in a customs
union, but not the single market represent a much softer Brexit
than the Conservative vision.
I don't think Jeremy Corbyn is a Eurosceptic.
He wants to protect jobs, first and foremost.
Corbyn's team believes that shifting to a more openly
anti-Brexit position could anger several million working class
Labour voters who backed Brexit.
They have constituencies that are
majority Leave and constituencies that
are majority Remain.
And from our position, you can't do much to stop Brexit anyway.
You can't even get a meaningful vote on the final bill.
Many Labour MPs who tried to force out Corbyn in 2016 now
find themselves on the same side as your Europhile members
of Momentum.
Alison McGovern is a leading Remain Labour MP on the right
of the party.
A lot of parts of the Labour party, Momentum included,
are now thinking that they should have a say on the Brexit
deal, and the British public should have a say.
It's notable that a lot of the trade unions
have had this conversation about policy conferences too,
now that we might, relatively soon, know more
about what it actually means.
I think people are wondering if the House of Commons
can't sort it out because it's a hung parliament,
maybe we need to go back to the British public.
On the other side of this debate are a number of pro-Brexit
Labour MPs who maintain that a hard core of Labour voters want
to leave.
In particular, they fear there's a failure
to support a crackdown on immigration which
would infuriate swaths of longstanding supporters
in the Midlands, northern England, and Wales.
I think Labour has got the right policies,
that we accept the result of the referendum,
and that means we accept we are leaving.
We supported Article 50.
And quite rightly, we want to make sure we
get as good a deal as possible.
And that means that we can trade as easily as we possibly
can, that there's an end to freedom of movement,
and we can come to, if it's possible,
to some sort of customs arrangement as well.
And I think, importantly, for the Labour party,
is also looking to the future and saying what are the sort
of areas of industrial policy, economic policy that maybe we
haven't been thinking hard enough about whilst we've been
in the European Union.
Alena Ivanonva feels that a move for another referendum
will not undermine Corbyn, and that the grassroots
need to be heard.
We have proved twice that the membership of the Labour party
wants Jeremy Corbyn to lead the Labour party.
If we have trust in our membership to do that,
then we can trust ourselves to just
have a friendly discussion about this one major issue.
But those in team Corbyn think that caution remains the best
way forward, and they would prefer a more nuanced approach.
Even the majority of people that voted Remain think the result
should be respected.
Now, once we get the deal, it could be a case
that people think, actually, this
is worse than staying in the European Union.
It looks like it might be going that way.
So I think it would depend on whether public opinion changes
by the time we get the deal, whether there is a move
to have another referendum.
In the last week or so, Theresa May has come back from Chequers
with her white paper on Brexit offering a softer option
than before, which she will now negotiate with the European
Union and put to Parliament.
Alison McGovern says there's no guarantee there's
a majority of MPs could either agree to those May proposals
or to an even softer Brexit or to a hard Brexit with no deal.
No one party can call all the shots.
There are two ways to deal with that.
Either you get everybody together and try and find
a compromise and listen to what all the different groups say.
Or we say, once we know what the deal is, then
the British public had better vote and say,
is this actually what they wanted?
Caroline Flint, a former cabinet minister from the New Labour
era now finds herself on the same side as the current Labour
leadership, at least on Europe.
Both agree that Britain should try
to negotiate the best deal possible,
but if necessary, have another general election rather than
a second referendum.
My message, to unite those in our party and organisations
outside our party trying to influence it,
we have to make the big decisions here about how
we're going to move forward.
Labour is not in government.
And are we going to stand by and allowed a no-deal option
to emerge out of all of this, which
I think would be terrible.
Or are we going to make sure we can get the best deal possible?
All in favour, please yell.
Meanwhile, there were also signs of movement among the powerful
unions who pay the bills for the Labour party.
Unite, the biggest union, recently
voted to keep open the possibility
of a second referendum vote.
All eyes within the Labour party will be on its annual
conference in September in Liverpool and the question
of whether, this time around, delegates will get a chance
to vote on Brexit policy.